


The Angels Sing

by Slantedlight (BySlantedlight)



Category: Ghost in the Shell, The Professionals
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:29:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BySlantedlight/pseuds/Slantedlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Bodie and Doyle in the world of <i>Ghost in the Shell</i>. London might be different, and they might not be the entirely the same themselves, but some things don't change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Angels Sing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minori_k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minori_k/gifts).



> Written for Minori_k, for the Pros fandomcard exchange, December 2014, based on [her inspiring AU CI5/Ghost in the Shell images](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1165280). I hope she doesn't mind me including two of her pictures here - I thought picturing _Ghost in the Shell_ Bodie and Doyle would be useful - and please see her post for a description of who exactly they are - apart from, hopefully, themselves!

  
[](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/byslantedlight/8284114/2677689/2677689_original.png) [](http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/byslantedlight/8284114/2677355/2677355_original.png)  


It’s cold on the rooftop, but Bodie doesn’t feel it unless he turns his sensors up, and he doesn’t want to do that yet. Doyle feels it, Bodie knows, but the thermo-optical gear he’s still wearing will keep him warm enough for now. For now Bodie wants the strange peace of being high above everything else, of just sitting, knowing that Doyle is breathing beside him, that everything should be alright again.

From here you’d never know that London was a rat’s nest of cybercrime and death, that there was anything more than history spread in front of them. The buildings look almost the same as they would have a hundred years ago, the preservation order that was slapped on the entire place keeping it frozen in time, as if it was still a city of stone and tile. 

Bodie knows that the stone and tile is wired, that the air they breathe is electric, that everything is plugged in, just waiting to be hacked. 

Doyle had been hacked today. Bodie breathes in, feeling it shake through him, more wires, prosthetics. Not real. The lights of London blink back at him in the night. Nothing real.

A shoulder nudges his, jarring him, and he looks up. Doyle is watching him, all eyes and hair without his helmet.

“You alright, mate? You look like you’re about to take a dive and you don’t plan to get back up.”

There’s a strange look in Doyle’s eyes when he says that, as though he’s retreating far away, away from what will come. His broken cheekbone is shadowed under his eye, a reminder, he’d said, when Bodie asked why he didn’t let them fix it properly, a reminder that people could still break.

That Doyle could break.

Bodie can’t say anything, can’t deny that sometimes the idea of such a leap calls to him, but he reaches up and brushes his thumb over Doyle’s face, not liking it when Doyle tries to distance himself from things. From Bodie. Doyle’s skin is cold, it must be, because it’s cold up here. Doyle reaches up and clasps his hand, holding it where it is, presses it harder against his face. 

“Don’t go,” Doyle says. “Cowley’d give me hell. Costs too much to train an agent, you know.”

Doyle was real. Cowley’d nearly had to replace him today. 

With his other hand, Bodie reaches to press his sensors on again, just a tap at the back of his neck, and then the wind is sharp around him, Doyle’s skin is cold under his fingers, and Bodie can feel that he’s shivering. It might not be just the cold.

“You know it’s Christmas eve,” he says, because he’s still thinking about history, about old London stretching far away around them, because the clouds above them look like snow, and he wants Doyle to know that there are things to look forward to.

“So it is. Think Father Christmas is out there somewhere, getting stuck down a chimney?”

Bodie snorts at this, amused. Doyle does that for him, he always does that for him. “He’s on his own if he is. We’re having a night off if I have to sacrifice Santa Claus and all his reindeer to get it.”

Doyle grins back, and then he turns around to face the city, pulling Bodie’s arms around him, so that they’re plastered together, Doyle solid and warm against Bodie’s chest, as close together as they can be up there above London, above the cyberworld, just the two of them. 

Reality isn’t so bad.

Bodie realises suddenly that he’s humming, an old carol that long ago, in the days when he had his own body, and his mum was still around, she’d sung to him on Christmas day. _Hark the herald angels sing_ … 

Doyle joins in, his voice deep and mellifluous in the night, and Bodie holds him closer, so that they’re both warm, together and warm, and real. _Peace on earth, good will_ to men… 

It’s peaceful on the rooftop, looking down over London, together on Christmas eve.

_December 2014_


End file.
